Current medical testing techniques are highly specific and require a number of individual devices and strategies to perform the testing. In medical testing, it is desirable to utilize tests and quantitative assay of specific agents such as virus, bacterium or toxin. Current testing procedures rely upon electro-chemical and pharmaceutical techniques which although effective, have certain shortcomings.
As well understood, an assay is an investigative/analytical procedure in laboratory medicine, pharmacology, environmental biology and molecular biology for qualitatively assessing or quantitatively measuring the presence or amount, or the functional activity of a target entity. The target entity is sometimes referred to as an analyte or the measurand or the target of the assay. In other words, the target entity is contained within a solution or other medium and which must be selectively accumulated so that the target entity can be further analyzed. One critical part of the assay process is collecting the sample for further analysis. Current systems do not allow for quick and defined collection of molecules of selected size range. For example, it may be desirable to analyze molecules ranging in size between 15 to 25 nanometers in diameter. Past methods might only collect molecules up to 25 nanometers and as a result molecules sized less than 15 nanometers in diameter will also be collected and these irrelevant smaller sized molecules may disrupt the testing of the sample. For example, it may be desirable to isolate a pathogen from blood plasma as a generalized test for the presence of a specific agent. Indeed, large molecules (e.g. heavy metal toxins), proteins (e.g. the prion responsible for mad cow disease) and distinct viruses including influenza and HIV occupy distinct bands within the size spectrum of 10 angstroms to 1000 angstroms.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a syringe that can selectively obtain a range of specifically sized materials. Moreover, there is a need in the art to selectively obtain molecules which are sized in the nanometer range.